My Last Thoughts about France

        Speaking of "Morning’s Minion" at the Reasons and Opinions blog, he has followed the Sisk/Berg debate  here about France and fills in statistics on some of the points we made.  Many of his numbers support my claim that while France has significant problems, we shouldn't join Greg in simply dismissing it as a "social disaster," and in some areas, especially health care and child welfare, ways its social-democratic approach produces better results than our approach.  On the other hand, Morning’s Minion notes that job protections for French workers come at the expense of the young, especially Muslims, who have high unemployment rates, which is obviously a sizzling kettle that has already boiled over a few times.  These judgments seem quite reasonable.  My point was never that France doesn't have significant problems – only that it shouldn't be dismissed as a "social disaster," especially when we have some pretty large bits of wood in our own eyes (in addition to the other points, think of how many of our young minority men are in prison, often for minor drug offenses, and not just unemployed).  I thought I caught more than a whiff in Greg’s original post of simple contempt for the French, especially (as I noted) in his casual assertion that despite electing a president who promised economic liberalization, the French will never make adjustments (because, after all, they’re the French).  There’s been plenty of demonization of France in the air recently, and it’s no better than the demonization of America by French and other European pundits (cataloged, e.g., in this book).  But I accept Greg’s assurance to me that this was not his goal, and that he chose to write about France because of the recent election.

        Greg's latest post connects reliance on government to the loss of faith in France.  He doesn't explain the mechanism, but I'll grant the point: reliance on government services can reduce people's reliance on church-related schools or social services, and thus can (primarily in the former case) undercut the transmission and reproduction of the faith.  That’s why I believe that religious schools and social services should be able to participate in government benefits programs, and why I’d like to see government ensure a level of assistance through taxes but rely on a variety of providers to deliver the services.  Unfortunately for Greg's simple argument, though, the French, like Europeans in general, give much more state assistance to religious K-12 schools than we do, and their social-democratic attitudes have a lot to do with that: they believe that positive government action can promote freedom, in this case freedom among educational options.  By contrast, our more negative attitude to taxing and spending explains in part why opposition to state aid to religious schools has been so strong in America: more of us think that state aid must be an imposition on taxpayers rather than a facilitation of families’ freedom.  (The French state aid, however, does have the problem of coming with lots of strings that have harmed the distinctiveness and autonomy of French Catholic schools.)

           Finally, although I agree that growth of government can reduce religious vigor, it seems to me we have to recognize that the loss of Christian faith in France, and Europe generally, has had a lot of other causes.  One was that for many decades before and after the French Revolution, the Church became historically associated with only one part of society (most the aristocracy and rural citizens) and one part of the political spectrum.  De Tocqueville had France especially in mind when he commended American Christianity for not getting too tied to one political party and thus losing the ability to reach half the population.  A second major factor was that the terrible destruction of lives and land from two world wars – effects of a kind and size that we never suffered here – made doubt in a providential God much more severe and widespread among Europeans.  Cf. Reinhold Niebuhr’s description in The Irony of American History of how Americans’ material good fortune – rich lands, the protection of two oceans – made it easier for us to believe in a providential God.  It seems to me that the loss of religious faith is in significant part separate from reliance on government, or a cause of that reliance, and only in part a result of it.